Eric Yip
| Eric Yip |
U.S. Fulbright Postgraduate scholar
Media Profile
“All spiders are predators. Only a small minority are social, and the endemic Australian huntsman spider is the most atypical of the known social spiders. Social conflict among Australian huntsman spiders, Delena cancerides (Sparassidae), can be intense. In their colonies they recognise members yet aggressively attack alien adult females. They may cohabit peacefully and then kill their sisters and destroy their egg sacs. These spiders pose a fascinating paradox: How can selection favour both sociality and frequent lethal conflict?”
Eric Yip has Bachelor of Science majoring in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Arizona. He has received several awards including the Cornell’s Sage Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and The Flinn Foundation Scholarship. Through his Fulbright Award Eric will undertake research at the Australian National University with Dr. David Rowell, a premier spider geneticist, to explore the social conflict of huntsman spiders using a social conflict model to examine the habitat limitations that may have led to sociality and social conflict of this species.
Eric has chosen an innovative research proposal looking at genetic techniques to determine relationships within and among the spider colonies. Following Dr Rowell’s discoveries that suggest Huntsman spiders have social traits that are radically different from those seen in any other known social spider species, Eric, through his Fulbright Award, will examine the genetic techniques to determine the relationships within and among the spider colonies. Understanding genetic relationships is a key to understanding most aspects of group formation, social conflict, colony stability and patterns of dispersion.
“As ecology constraints increase so does social conflict. In other words, the environmental pressures that favoured sociability could be the very same pressures that promote conflict”, Eric explained. Eric will conduct field studies and create boxed colonies to examine habitat restrictions and to explore Delena cancerides’ unusual social dynamics.
Eric will make great use of the facilities at the Australian National University and develop relations concurrently with Dr Linda Rayor at the Department of Entomology at Cornell University.
“My study goals are to measure conflict and group benefits, retreat availability and population sizes, and relatedness within and among colonies. My studies will be done at three sites, Ainslie, Araluen, and Tidbinbilla, all with known populations of D. cancerides. I will record the frequency of agonistic behaviour and its intensity (from chasing to killing colony-mates) as measures of social conflict. While I may serendipitously witness invasions, I will also introduce alien D. cancerides females and solitary huntsman spiders and record behaviour and invasion success by colony size. “